by Carolyn Yeager

I Con the World

Is Elie Wiesel an icon or an “I con?”

Venerated and billed as “the world’s most famous Holocaust survivor” and a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, earning hundreds of thousands of dollars every year in speaking fees (at $25,000 a pop it might be closer to say a million), and holding a prestigious, but undemanding six-figure professorship in Humanities at Boston University, Elie Wiesel has never been asked to show any proof that he is what he says he is.

Everything written about Elie Wiesel that this writer can find skims over the details and dwells on the emotionality of holocaust, humanity and hate. Among the many unnerving quotations from Elie concerning the last h-word is this one, found preceding an essay in the Jewish Daily Forward of June 9th by Anita Epstein, titled “Why I Cannot Forgive Germany:” [1]

“I cannot and I do not want to forgive the killers of children; I ask God not to forgive.”

     – Elie Wiesel

Ms. Epstein is influenced (or inspired?) by Wiesel to hold onto hate by holding on to the holocaust legends, such as the one about “Germans” throwing babies off of balconies. Another famous statement made by Elie is:

“Every Jew, somewhere in his being, should set apart a zone of hate – healthy virile hate – for what the German personifies and for what persists in the German. To do otherwise would be a betrayal of the dead. ”

Elie Wiesel actually plays God. The world has been conned into seeing him as the next best thing to God, as someone who has risen above it all, as someone who is capable or has earned the right to pass judgment on the rest of humanity. What has earned him this right is clearly his suffering during the one year he was held in concentration camps and his “powerful prose” in describing it.

However, Elie’s actual presence in the Auschwitz “death camp” and the Buchenwald concentration camp during 1944-45 rests solely on the claims of the New York Times and his well-promoted books, the most famous being his first one, Night, published in 1955 in Buenos Aires. That’s an interesting story in itself, but here I will limit myself to a chronology of NYT features on Elie that coincide with his advancing fortunes.
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By Carlo Mattogno

In my study Special Treatment in Auschwitz. Origin and Meaning of a Term[1] I have written as follows:

«“Special Units” of the Crematoria
Danuta Czech explains the origin and meaning of the term “Sonderkommando” (special unit) as follows:
“The extermination camp created also one other group of people, those who were forced to work in the crematoria and gas chambers – the unfortunate people were assigned to the work of the special unit. The SS used code words if they spoke about the mass extermination of those ‘unworthy of life.’ It called the mass extermination as well as the transports leading
to selection ‘special treatment’ (often abbreviated as SB). Thus, also, the expression ‘special unit.’”
In other words, since criminal activity described by the code word ‘special treatment’ was allegedly being conducted in the crematoria, the staff employed there had of necessity to be a ‘special unit.’ Naturally it was the only work unit at Auschwitz that merited the prefix ‘special’ [sonder] – otherwise the word would have lost the criminal significance that it possessed according to official historiography.
Based on the documents, the reality is entirely different. First of all, the expression ‘special unit’ does not appear in a single document referring to the crematoria. In its ‘magnum opus’ the Auschwitz museum attempted to prove, on the basis of two documents, that this term was used for the crematoria personnel. The first document is a duty roster for July 18, 1944 [”Dienstplan für Dienstag”, dated 17 July], the second order no. 8/43 of April 20, 1943 from the Commandant’s Headquarters. But the first document merely mentions the term ‘special unit’ in connection with a gate control [Torkontrolle]»

Here a correction is necessary. (Read more…)

By Carlo Mattogno

It is an acknowledged fact that Holocaust historiography reached its peak in 2002 and has since begun a gradual and inexorable decline. Revisionist historiography, by contrast, has flourished in the last decade. As for myself, I have in this time published a dozen studies, the most recent being Auschwitz: assistenza sanitaria, “selezione” e “Sonderbehandlung” dei detenuti immatricolati (“Auschwitz: sanitary service, ‘selections’ and ‘special treatment’ of registered inmates, Effepi, Genoa 2010), in which I have dealt with all the basic aspects of the Auschwitz camp. (Read more…)

By Carlo Mattogno

In a discussion of my study Special Treatment in Auschwitz. Origin and Meaning of a Term (Theses & Dissertations Press, Chicago 2004), Holocaust blogger Sergey Romanov puts forth the following critique:

«Mattogno discusses lots of Auschwitz documents which contain the code words, and an unsuspecting reader might be duped into believing that Mattogno really did discuss (and rip to shreds) all the Auschwitz-related documentary evidence containing the code words. However, Mattogno deceptively omits the most crucial source on the use of the code word»

He concludes:

«Therefore, by omitting any mention of these prominent documents Carlo Mattogno has engaged in a gross and unforgivable deception. We hope to treat Mattogno’s other arguments from this and other books in the future, but it has already been established that one cannot rely on him to present the evidence fairly».[1]

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By Carlo Mattogno

Two important document sources to which I have had access recently prompt me to write a sequel, with some revisions, to the two articles I have published earlier on the present subject [1], in order to bring the matter up to date.

1) The accusations of Miklos Grüner

In his book Stolen Identity. Auschwitz Number A-7713 [2], Miklos Grüner, a Hungarian Jew and former deportee to Auschwitz (ID number A-11104) and to Buchenwald (120762), accuses Elie Wiesel, Nobel Peace Prize laureate of 1986, to have appropriated the identity of another Hungarian Jewish inmate of Auschwitz and Buchenwald, Lazar Wiesel, as well as the Yiddish publication Un di velt hot geschwign (And the world remained silent) which Lazar Wiesel published in Buenos Aires in 1956. Grüner’s account contains a sizable documentation, parts of which are new, although it must be said that the author’s interpretation of some of these documents appears somewhat questionable.
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By Carlo Mattogno

After the publication of my article Elie Wiesel: “The Most Authoritative Living Witness” of The Shoah?[1] I learned about a Hungarian website on which Miklòs Grüner has compiled a substantial documentation regarding this subject.[2] Grüner has, for years, made highly commendable efforts to ascertain Elie Wiesel’s personality, but his work has been passed by for too long.

I will not go into Grüner’s denouncements of identity theft on the part of the Nobel laureate, levelled against various authorities and will limit myself to the corresponding documents.
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By Carolyn Yeager

In 1995, Ernst Lobethall gave his testimony as a survivor of “The Holocaust” to the Survivors of the Shoah Foundation for their video library, as thousands of others have done. In it, he had some words to say about a British soldier he met while interned at Auschwitz III (Monowitz) who had done him a favor.

Lobethall records that the soldier he called Ginger “gave me a letter and 10 packs of cigarettes, and a bar of chocolate from my sister. Ten packs of English cigarettes – it’s like being given Rockefeller Center.” He also said, “I had no heavy socks to put on my boots; for two packs of Players cigarettes, (pause) and that, later on, came, again, to save my life on the death marches that took place in 1945.” This clip from the video was shown on the BBC Online News Magazine on November 29, 2009.[1] The article says that

Mr Lobethall traded two packs of Players cigarettes in return for getting his shoes resoled. It helped save his life when thousands perished or were murdered on the notorious death marches out of the camps in winter in 1945.

Lobethall’s testimony was at some point taken under consideration by the Yad Vashem Memorial Museum’s “Commission for the Designation of the Righteous,” a rather pompously-named committee, headed since 2005 by Israel Supreme Court Justice Jacob Tuerkel, that examines candidates before bestowing upon them the equally grandiose title of “Righteous Among the Nations.”
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By Carlo Mattogno

On 27 January 2010, the tenth “Holocaust Remembrance Day”, Elie Wiesel was invited into Montecitorio Hall, the seat of the Chamber of Deputies of the Italian Republic where he had the opportunity to give a brief speech. The president of the Chamber, Gianfranco Fini, introduced him as “the most authoritative living witness of the horrors of the Shoah among the survivors of the Nazi concentration camps”.[1] But is he really a witness?

Is Elie Wiesel an impostor?

On 3 March 2009, a Hungarian website published an article entitled Még mindig kísérti a haláltábor (The extermination camp is still tempting)[2] and outlining important revelations by Miklós Grüner, a former deportee to Auschwitz. The article was translated and appeared the following day under the title Auschwitz Survivor Claims Elie Wiesel is an Impostor[3]. The text reads as follows: (Read more…)

By Carolyn Yeager

Dear Dr. Neander,

Thank you for your letter of February 3rd. First let me assure you that you are welcome to any assistance I can give you in keeping the facts about Irene Zisblatt and the entire “Auschwitz experience” in order. (See 2nd paragraph at:
http://holocaustcontroversies.blogspot.com/2010/02/response-to-c-yeager.html#_ftnref2)
As a self-described independent scholar who has moved to Poland from Germany (I gather) and lives in Cracow, close to the Auschwitz-Birkenau (A-B) Memorial Museum, you obviously have a desire to be, or believe that you are, an “expert” on A-B. Very good, since we certainly need real experts to help us deal with the many, many falsehoods and perversions promulgated about this place since at least 1941, but especially after 1945. (Read more…)

By Carlo Mattogno (February 2010)

Joachim Neander claims that he is able to give the name of two prisoners who were gassed at Auschwitz. He notes that the “Bunkerbuch” on 5 September 1941 has recorded the death of three detainees, Fritz Renner, Bruno Grosman and Roman Drost, of which the first two are Germans. Since «they all died the same day when the first mass gassing was carried out in the basement of Block 11 (date Sep 5, 1941, according to reports that, shortly after the event, reached the Polish Government-in-Exile in London)» this shows that they were gassed. He adds that «Carlo Mattogno does neither take into consideration the “Bunker” ledger nor the Rögner report nor the accounts of the Polish prisoners who were involved in the September 5, 1941, “action”».[1] (Read more…)